awarded inheritance to three grandmothers: your two grandmothers on your father’s side and your grandmother on your mother’s side.” This is a fair report transmitted by a Successor directly from the Prophet, for Ibrāhīm’s reports of this kind are among the best. Ahmad therefore adopted it. The text mentions inheritance only for these grandmothers.

Another view is that all grandmothers whose relationship to the deceased is traced through an heir inherit. This is the view of the majority, including Abū Hanīfah, al-Shāfi‘ī, and others, and is also a position within Ahmad’s school. This view is stronger. Although the wording of the text does not encompass every grandmother, when the second grandmother came to al-Siddīq, he told her: “The sixth that was awarded was only for someone other than you; but if she were its sole claimant, it would be hers.” Thus he awarded inheritance to the second, although the text concerned someone other than her.

Moreover, there is no disagreement that grandmothers farther up the maternal line inherit. Thus, the father’s mother’s mother and the mother’s mother’s mother inherit by agreement. This leaves the mother of the grandfather’s father: what distinguishes her from the grandfather’s mother, even if a distinction is drawn between the father’s mother and the grandfather’s mother? It is well known that the grandfather’s father takes the grandfather’s place; indeed, he is simply a more distant grandfather. Likewise, the grandfather stands in the father’s place. On what grounds, then, can one distinguish between the father’s mother’s mother and the mother of the grandfather’s father?

This is clarified by the fact that the deceased’s mother’s mother and his father’s mother stand in an equal relationship to him. Likewise, his father’s mother’s mother and his father’s father’s mother stand in an equal relationship to his father. They must therefore share in the inheritance.

Furthermore, these scholars allow the mother’s mother’s mother to inherit, however much farther the maternal line extends, while denying inheritance to the father’s father’s mother. They thus give preference to the grandmother on the mother’s side over the grandmother on the father’s side. This is a weak view, for the mother’s mother has no greater claim than the father’s mother, and maternal relatives have not